An employee walking along a thermal pipe at the Kamojang geothermalpower plant near Garut, West Java, on March 18. State utility provider Perusahaan Listrik Negara is targeting an additional 135 megawatts ofelectricity from three new geothermal plants. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta)

So let me tell you what else they did. They just showed you what's wrong with nuclear power. "Safe to the maximum," they said. "Our devices are strong and cannot fail." But they did. They are no match for Gaia.

It seems that for more than 20 years, every single time we sit in the chair and speak of electric power, we tell you that hundreds of thousands of tons of push/pull energy on a regular schedule is available to you. It is moon-driven, forever. It can make all of the electricity for all of the cities on your planet, no matter how much you use. There's no environmental impact at all. Use the power of the tides, the oceans, the waves in clever ways. Use them in a bigger way than any designer has ever put together yet, to power your cities. The largest cities on your planet are on the coasts, and that's where the power source is. Hydro is the answer. It's not dangerous. You've ignored it because it seems harder to engineer and it's not in a controlled environment. Yet, you've chosen to build one of the most complex and dangerous steam engines on Earth - nuclear power.

We also have indicated that all you have to do is dig down deep enough and the planet will give you heat. It's right below the surface, not too far away all the time. You'll have a Gaia steam engine that way, too. There's no danger at all and you don't have to dig that far. All you have to do is heat fluid, and there are some fluids that boil far faster than water. So we say it again and again. Maybe this will show you what's wrong with what you've been doing, and this will turn the attitudes of your science to create something so beautiful and so powerful for your grandchildren. Why do you think you were given the moon? Now you know.

This benevolent Universe gave you an astral body that allows the waters in your ocean to push and pull and push on the most regular schedule of anything you know of. Yet there you sit enjoying just looking at it instead of using it. It could be enormous, free energy forever, ready to be converted when you design the methods of capturing it. It's time. …”

Bamboo points way to green construction in Indonesia's Bali

So much so
that in recognition of the material's versatility, the Indonesian island of
Bali has made it an emblem of sustainable construction, replacing buildings of
concrete and steel with far greener alternatives.

An entire
school, luxury villas and even a chocolate factory are the latest structures to
rise from bamboo skeletons as the plant's green credentials and strength are
hailed.

A
general view a a roof of a chocolate factory constructed from bamboo at a
village in Sibang, Badung regency on Bali island in this photograph takenon
June 4, 2012. (AFP Photo/Sonny Tumbelaka)

The
factory, which opened last year and produces organic drinking chocolate and
cocoa butter, is the latest in a string of buildings on the island, including
homes and businesses, to be built of bamboo.

Erected in
the village of Sibang Kaja between the resort island's smoggy capital Denpasar
and the forests of Ubud, the factory is the initiative of specialty food firm
Big Tree Farms, which claims the 2,550-square-metre (27,500-square-foot)
facility is the biggest commercial bamboo building in the world.

"Bamboo
is unmatched as a sustainable building material. What it can do is
remarkable," Big Tree Farms co-founder Ben Ripple, 37, told AFP.

"It
grows far more quickly than timber and doesn't destroy the land it's grown
on," said Ripple, an American from Connecticut. "Our factory can be
packed up and moved in days, so if we decided to shut it down one day, we're
not going to damage the rice paddies we sit on."

The 100
hectares (247 acres) of paddies sit inside a so-called "bamboo
triangle," with the factory, school and villas standing at each of the
three points.

Such
ambitious bamboo projects in Bali are mostly driven by eco-conscious
foreigners.

With
studies showing construction to be one of the world's least sustainable
industries - eating up around half of the globe's non-renewable resources -
sustainable construction is slowly taking root around the world.

It is among
the key topics for discussion at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development, which opens June 20 in Rio de Janeiro.

In Sibang,
the tawny brown bamboo buildings with their grass thatched roofs appear to be
rising from the earth.

The
three-storey chocolate factory is pieced together using a complex system of
scissor trusses and bolts, thanks to clever architecture.

It
resembles the traditional longhouses found on Borneo island and was made with
more than 18,000 metres (59,000 feet) of bamboo from Bali and Java.

At Sibang's
nearby Green School, the 240 students - most of them children of expatriates -
learn in semi-outdoor classrooms decked with bamboo furniture.

The school,
which opened in 2008 and was the magnet for the other two projects, has 25
bamboo buildings, the main one being a stilt-structure constructed with 2,500
bamboo poles, or culms.

"In
Hong Kong and China, they make new skyscrapers of concrete and glass using
bamboo scaffolding. But here, the workmen stood on steel scaffolding to build
this bamboo building. That's always seemed funny to me," said Green School
admissions head Ben Macrory, from New York.

"In
most parts of Asia, bamboo is seen as the poor man's timber."

Not,
however, in Sibang, where the bamboo villas that nestle between the palm trees
are worth US$350,000 to US$700,000 (S$450,000 to S$899,000) each.

Like
decadent treehouses for adults, they have semi-outdoor areas and include innovative
bamboo flooring that resembles smooth timber and jellybean-shaped coffee tables
made from thin bamboo slats.

Bamboo -
technically a grass - has been used in building for centuries because of its
impressive strength-to-weight ratio.

Jules
Janssen, an authority on bamboo in the Netherlands, says that the weight of a
5,000-kilogram (11,000-pound) elephant can be supported by a short bamboo stub
with a surface area of just 10 square centimetres (1.5 square inches).

One reason
bamboo is so environmentally-friendly is the speed at which it grows, according
to Terry Sunderland, a scientist at the Centre for International Forestry
Research in Indonesia.

"In
China, eucalyptus can grow at three to four metres (10-13 feet) a year, which
is very impressive for timber. But building-quality bamboo will grow between
six and 10 metres (20-33 feet) in that time," he said.

And unlike
trees that rarely grow back once felled, bamboo will continue to produce new
shoots even after cutting.

But even
bamboo has its drawbacks.

Without
intensive treatment, it is prone to rotting after exposure to water. It also
catches fire relatively easily, which is why many countries limit bamboo
structures to just a few storeys.

Ripple
acknowledged that building with bamboo was not foolproof, but expressed
optimism that the technology to protect it from the elements will improve.

"A
friend we work with here always says bamboo needs a hat, rain jacket and
boots," he said. "We're lacking on the rain jacket a bit, but we're
looking at non-toxic materials to give it some protection."

Health, Safety & Environment

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Today, fewer than 20% of households in Indonesia have access to piped water, which is inexpensive and still of reasonable quality compared to alternative sources. The situation has deteriorated in recent years, as the sector can no longer rely on central government grants and loans, formerly major sources of funding.Read More ...

FREE CAR WASH: A taxi is sprayed with water from a broken pipe on Jl. HR Rasuna Said in South Jakarta on Sunday. (JP/J. Adiguna)

GIFT FROM EARTH: Almost half of Jakarta's residents use groundwater as their main source of clean water due to a lack of access to treated piped water. Water comes from wells like the one this family in Kampung Bahari, North Jakarta are using (photo above), or mechanic pumps like this one in Kampung Melayu, South Jakarta. (JP/P.J. Leo)

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